Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite 344
Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge reports that a fansite providing subtitles for movies has been raided by Swedish police at the behest of the copyright industry.
"The movie subtitle fansite undertexter.se, literally meaning subtitles.se, is a site where people contribute their own translations of movies. This lets people who aren't good at the original language of a movie or cartoon put those fan-made subtitles – fansubs – on top of the movie or cartoon. Fansubbing is a thriving culture which usually provides better-than-professional subtitles for new episodes with less than 24 hours of turnaround (whereas the providers of the original cartoon or movie can easily take six months or more). What’s remarkable about this raid is that the copyright industry has decided to do a full-out raid against something that is entirely fan-made. It underscores the general sentiment of the copyright monopoly not protecting the creator of artwork, but protecting the big distribution monopolies, no matter who actually created the art."
Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there is some copyright issues with translatins, but seriously, fuck the copyright holders, and the middle-men, in this case. And, of course, fuck the police.
What the industry needs to do instead of this sort of bullshit, is to contract with the fansubbers, and pay them for their work. The fansubbers provider a much quicker turn around on translations and subs, and are doing it for the love of the work. What better way to make yourself look even better, than to not just tolerate, but to pay!?
The fansubbers allow people to watch the media who would otherwise not be able to (due to not understanding the language). That's great. I wish them well.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, those darned Swedes were in a clear violation of U.S. Code Title 17, 102 and 106. Which is punishable with a fine of up to $150,000, they should have known the law. Which makes me wonder, does the EU copyright lobby organize raids on companies in the US? Would the FBI cooperate?
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bullshit...
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ...
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;"
They didn't grant them the right to create this derivative work.
One of the many ways that "intellectual property" is a fucking lie.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, all works are derivative. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes, all works are derivative. (Score:5, Interesting)
True, all works are derivative. But not all works are derivative of something that is still in copyright. If you want to (by way of completely random example) do a translation of Les Miserables and then make an english-language musical out of it, there's nobody to stop you because the original source is long out of copyright.
That's one way of looking at it. The other way is that there are other derivatives of Les Miserables which _are_ under copyright, and the people who own them would like to have a few words with you about exactly what you have created a derivative work of.
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That's one way of looking at it. The other way is that there are other derivatives of Les Miserables which _are_ under copyright, and the people who own them would like to have a few words with you about exactly what you have created a derivative work of.
Which is fine, as long as you've created a musical derivative of Victor Hugo's book and not of Boubill/Natel/Kretzler book. If you have songs called "I Dreamed a Dream," "Do You Hear the People Sing," and "Bring Him Home," I'd start to worry.
Re:Yes, all works are derivative. (Score:4, Interesting)
This happens a lot with Disney, as they have used many public domain or out-of-copyright works as sources for their movies, and then sue if there is another work that might possibly in some way be confused with the Disney work.
They can sue if they can show that your work is a derivative of the Disney work, which is itself now a new copyrighted work. For example, if your animated feature of The Hunchback of Notre Dame happens to have three singing gargoyles, a cute, lovable little Quasimodo, a noble, heroic Phoebus, and a crappy happy ending where the boy gets the girl and they all live happily ever after, you might have a problem. But if your movie has a hulking, ugly, monstrous Quasimodo who dumps molten lead on the invading army, a vain and shallow Phoebus who loses interest in Esmeralda after sex doesn't work out, and everybody dies at the end, you should be good to go. Even if your Quasimodo cries "Sanctuary!" three times while triumphantly displaying an unconscious Esmeralda---an element common to the book and the crappy Disney movie---you're fine. You are free to copy the original. You aren't free to copy the copy.
Re:Yes, all works are derivative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly true either. They can sue without of the evidence of infringement if they're so inclined. They'll lose if the evidence is against them, but they'll still put a heavy financial burden on the party they'll sue. If Disney thinks they can bankrupt the defendant, and it's worth the cost, then they can sue with practically no standing.
That's why corporate ownership of copyright is a financially asymmetrical and unfair legal allowance. The richest media companies can buy up whatever properties they want and then tie up smaller parties in a civil suit subsequently incurring disproportionate expense on the defendant. They can then offer a settlement deal, and give the smaller party a cheaper option than winning in court. If Disney loses in court, it's objective is still realized by the bankruptcy of the defendant. If the defendant instead settles, they promise to censor their work irrespective of whether or not the work was infringing. If Disney wins, it gets to expand the scope of its intellectual property and bankrupt the defendant. Its a no-lose situation for Disney if the value of the defendant's property is equal to or greater than court costs.
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They do:
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20100818/midtown/port-authority-raids-midtown-perfume-wholesaler-hawking-counterfeit-goods [dnainfo.com]
That's just the first one that came up in Google. They do this all the time.
although, I'd argue this kind of raid is a heck of a lot more legitimate as they are actually ripping people off by selling them fake stuff.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or, perhaps, Article 8 of the Berne Convention [cornell.edu], to which Sweden is a signatory [wipo.int], and Article 2 of the Swedish Copyright Legislation [www.ivir.nl], which implements the treaty obligation and states that "...copyright shall include the excludive right to exploit the work by making copies of it and by making it available to the public, be it in the original or an altered manner, in translation or adaptation, in another literary or artistic
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What the industry needs to do instead of this sort of bullshit, is to contract with the fansubbers, and pay them for their work.
Or, do their jobs producing timely translations of their own works. Then there'd be no need/call/market for fansubbers in the first place.
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contract with the fansubbers, and pay them for their work.
The post production company I work for contracts with a vendor whose business model is to originate closed captions by crowd sourcing. Basically you get paid per minute of video you transcribe via their web portal.
In fact, all of our subtitle translation work is done via contracting, so there is opportunity for fansubbers to get paid for their work.
copyright issues? Not with the translations. (Score:3)
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
Woah there... Who said anything about pirating? If you wanted to watch a movie you bought that was not in a language you can understand, wouldn't you want subtitles?
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Woah there... Who said anything about pirating? If you wanted to watch a movie you bought that was not in a language you can understand, wouldn't you want subtitles?
Yes, but in many cases it is cheaper to buy an english only version of a movie than one with local subtitles. The MPAA want to preserve this charging of countries other than the US more money for the same crap.
Just because this makes sense does not really make it right though. I think they missed the point here as in many cases the user contributed subtitles are better than the original subtitles they provide as they often contain local slang that only someone who can swear well in both languages can make. They should have let this stand as all it had was text which without a copy of the video and sound would be pretty useless.
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Woah there... Who said anything about pirating? If you wanted to watch a movie you bought that was not in a language you can understand, wouldn't you want subtitles?
Yes, but in many cases it is cheaper to buy an english only version of a movie than one with local subtitles. The MPAA want to preserve this charging of countries other than the US more money for the same crap.
Just because this makes sense does not really make it right though. I think they missed the point here as in many cases the user contributed subtitles are better than the original subtitles they provide as they often contain local slang that only someone who can swear well in both languages can make. They should have let this stand as all it had was text which without a copy of the video and sound would be pretty useless.
Interestingly, beyond that, I don't think this raid would even be legal in the US. The fans are creating commentary on the original work; they are not creating a derivative. They do not have access to the screenplays or the commercial subtitle scripts -- so everything they write is purely commentary on the movie, which just happens to be able to sync up with the actual video/audio. The fact that the studios eventually offer a similar product for sale is neither here nor there -- they have no copyright cl
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everything they write is purely commentary on the movie, which just happens to be able to sync up with the actual video/audio. The fact that the studios eventually offer a similar product for sale is neither here nor there -- they have no copyright claim over the subtitles.
How does transcribing dialogue from a movie, translating it, and publishing the result differ from translating a book and publishing the result?
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And at the same time likely increased the sales of the DVD in the original language.
You are correct in that a translation is considered a derivative work (at least under US law). Whether it should be considered as a violation of copyright law is debatable however. You seem to intuit harm due to fans providing free subtitles. I would argue that the harm is mostly non-existant in that lower sales of language specific versions are offset by sales of the original language version. It might even encourage more p
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Informative)
If you wanted to watch a movie you bought that was not in a language you can understand, wouldn't you want subtitles?
At the risk of going slightly off-topic, I would like to point out that this is not the only reason to desire subtitles. I have some hearing loss. It is not severe, but I do occasionally have to ask people to repeat what they said, and I cannot relax and enjoy any movie without subtitles. I strain to listen, and still miss things and have to rewind.
Subtitles are also a great way to learn a foreign language, and even build up your native language vocabulary. I live in a trilingual family (English/Mandarin/Spanish) and subtitles have been a great tool for me and my family. I can read Chinese/Spanish much better than I can understand them when spoken. So to improve my listening skills, I watch English movies with English subtitles, Chinese movies with Chinese subtitles, and Spanish moves with Spanish subtitles.
If a movie does not have good, accurate subtitles, then I don't watch it.
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Beacuse some sub sites not only give subs, but also the movie with the subs already added in. Convenient, yes. But also technically redistributing a copyrighted work. I know, its more convenient and often a better translation (if you pick and choose). And if the copyright holder was smart, he'd even contract it out to these guys in the first place. But no one ever said people had to be smart in teh exercising of their rights, including copyrights. (much like if they were smart, they'd stop fighting Netflix
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Get this through your head. the movie makers made or lost their tens of millions the first few weeks of the thing opening, and some more when DVD released. that doesn't change with this fansubbing practice. The equillibrium state of information is to be free in both the sense of known and worth, get that through your head, and the original intention of copyright with short expiration term was that works become part of the culture, get that through your head. The entertainment cartels are using law enfor
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Informative)
Movies and music are NOT free. Get that through your head. You might find it convenient to freely stream a flick some conglomerate of investors sank $100 million to produce. No matter how you rationalize what you're doing you're taking for free what someone spent money to produce and is trying to sell.
The fundamentals will not change. Not thinking a movie is worth of your $10 is not an excuse. Thinking the lead actor is an untalented douche is not an excuse. Hating the producer is not an excuse. Your convenience is not an excuse. You are not entitled to free shit and you are not a delicate unique little snowflake.
They aren't hosting movies, they are transcribing movies into subtitles, if anything, they are making the movies more desirable by making them available in many more languages.
Aside from the obvious benefit for those that want to watch a movie filmed in a language they don't speak, I also found it useful to add subtitles to movies I already own. When my wife's Japanese speaking family came to visit from Japan, I was able to find subtitle files that matched up with some titles that I owned on DVD. I had to adjust the timing a bit to get them to match up, but it opened up a lot of movie possibilities that wouldn't otherwise be available. Few movies sold in the USA are subtitled in Japanese (though I did find a few Japanese movies on Netflix that are subtitled in English). I did see some movies on Amazon.jp that were English with Japanese subtitles, but since I lack a region-2 or multiregion DVD player, the movie industry has made it impossible for me to view them.
I've already paid for the movie and its content for personal viewing, so it's hard for the movie industry to say that someone translating from English->Japanese is stealing their creative work.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the Nordic region it's even worse.
While technically a part of the EU (except Norway), the Nordic countries don't use your bog standard R2/B region DVDs/Blu-Rays, but a special Nordic variant of it.
Quite often sans the extras of say a UK R2/B release, and often using inferior film elements which some leeching middle-men rightsholder in say Sweden has the "rights" to. Pricing is - of course - the same though, if not higher than the comparable UK release. Yes, I'm looking at you Atlantic Film AB!
That free
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they could just spend 200 million on it.
I've yet to see budget correlate to how good the movie is and I have limited amount of time. Also I haven't noticed any correlation in if the movie was worth making regards to amount of piracy, at least in the negative sense when it comes to the movie making a profit.
If nobody is bothering to watch it for free then the movie has usually tanked badly in box office.
as to who wanted the raid to happen? maybe, just maybe it was the swedish writers union. maybe they got ti
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Re:Fuck 'em (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't Reddit. Once a comment is modded to -1, no further downmods are permitted as the comment as reached its limit.
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yeah, on slashdot you can write any poppycock shit you want and still retain EXCELLENT karma.
and about movies not being free.. well.. fuck me. how come the movies that are hardest hit by piracy happen to be making the most money..
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Informative)
Unless it gets upmodded as "Funny," which gives the comment a point, but no karma to the user. With the comment now scored 0 instead of -1, it may be downmodded -1 Troll, which will cause the user to lose 1 karma. So, if you really want to hammer somebody who's already been modded to -1, mod them Funny and wait for another mod to correct your "mistake."
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Funny)
Can you read? No, seriously, are you actually able to read?
No. That's why he's got a hatred for subtitles.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, is that the reason? Why not just say pirating causes breast cancer too?
The quality of RIAA/MPAA troll has really gone down. I guess qualified people are figuring out that it's better doing something that's more ethical, like running three card monte games.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
We pay $50+ here in America for concerts because of music pirating.
WTF?
No, dude, you pay $150+ for concerts because recording labels and certain 'artists' are greedy, avaricious fuckheads.
[insert gag about Kid Rock being able to charge $20 for tickets because nobody listens to his shitty music anyway, let alone pirating it]
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The consequences can range from all sorts of things, but I find the most appropriate consequences isn't to steal your shit, but instead to illegally copy it (Which isn't stealing at all, but seems to aggravate the fuck out of you--which is exactly what I want to do..
Hate to break this to ya, but you're playing right into their hands - think about how the MPAA/RIAA spin piracy.
"Well, obviously this piece of IP is at least worth what we charge, otherwise all these people wouldn't be stealing it!
I would say your best bet is to just boycott their products, but fuck if they don't have a way to spin that to their advantage as well (every lost sale, regardless of reason, == OMFGPIRATES!)
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing he said was trolling. Nothing he said was BS. Nothing he said was pro-RIAA/MPAA.
A producer, or creator or author or whatever you want to call him, has a fundamental right to profit off his created work (his "goods and services") the same as any other. Merely supporting that right is not the same as supporting the MPAA, nor is it BS.
And so if I legally purchase a movie and then use sub-titles created by someone else so I can understand the dialogue, I'm ripping off the creator of the work? Please explain how that is.
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Subtitles are not the movie, they're text versions of translated text of the voice track of a movie.
In many cases, they're not even "text versions" of the voice track - they're paraphrases of what's being spoken, using completely different words. I've seen some professionally done subtitling (as well as fan-created) that even changes the meaning of what's being said.
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Since when has the industry had any interest in broadening their sales? if anything, the reverse. see region coding, or try using netflix outside of the USA (hint, you won't find the same selection)
The industry won't wake up and embrace the global economy, they will go down kicking and screaming, and they intend to take the rest of the world with them.
Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive right (Score:5, Insightful)
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Under current law, a translation of an audiovisual work's original script into another language is a derivative work.
Surely I can't be the only one who finds such a law to fall under the category of "royally fucked?"
Other than being an aspect of the profit-protection racket, what possible, legitimate reason would there be for that kind of legislation?
Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri (Score:5, Informative)
So that a company in another country can't, for example, take the novel you wrote, translate it and not pay you a cent.
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You may have a point for things like books. But this is certainly not a case for movie subtitles. How many people do you know who will skip seeing a movie just because they have the subtitles? Even deaf people will want to see the visuals.
Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the translated script by itself is not useful. There is no reason to pirate subtitles alone, so there's no need for those to be protected too. If I download fan-made subtitles, I still need to get the movie for them to be useful. It's the AUDIOVISUAL part which contains the entertainment utility (and deserving of some protection).
A book is different because it is solely the words themselves that contain the entertainment utility.
Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I will of course pay the same amount for an English movie, with English speakers, speaking English in the movie as I would for a badly dubbed Chinese version of the movie with translated English subtitles.
How do you remember to breath all the time?
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It is derivative. But translations by themselves are worthy of copyright protection as well. If you are one of those people who only care about the letter of the law and not the spirit of a law you neither much of a citizen nor much of a human being.
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> I fail to see the relevance of your post.
Of course not. You're too much of a corporate toadie.
His post was an obvious prelude to a fair use defense. Fansubbing does not devalue the work. It is not piracy in any meaningful sense of the word. It's merely end users managing to find some way of making a particular creative work more useful.
This "derivative" also can't be used without the original.
Copyright related monopoly powers should be minimized rather than maximized as a matter of basic public policy
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yeah but fansubs are a community of people who have more time than money and they allow more people to enjoy the artwork, and in the case of anime it can resurect anime from the dead and give it new life, and are supposed to stop sharing when the official usa launch is announced. basically fansubs are unpaid critics of anime and do a better job letting their community know which anime to buy when it hits. fansubs are not restricted to the anime fans, and there are torrenters who ignore the 'until usa launc
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Exactly, you wouldn't want that. Which is why US publishers have always respected the copyright of UK publishers and paid them for their work. Oh, no wait, they didn't. In the 19th century, US publishers routinely republished UK titles without paying royalties. Only when US culture came to dominate the global market did they join in international copyright protection rackets^W schemes.
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That's text to text translation, that is a derivative work. However a voice to text translation is not necessarily in the same category. An Italian translation of a book written in, say, German, is intended to replace that book for those more comfortable in Italian - most people would buy one or the other, not both. Italian subtitles to a German movie, however, are useless without the original movie. It's not a translation of any text anyone would ever actually read, rather it's more like a cheat-sheet for
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To answer your question, what legitimate use can there be for custom subtitles for movies which have not yet been released to the public ..
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Non sequitur - nowhere in TFS or TFA is it stated that the fan-subs were made for illegally pirated movies.
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False equivalence. The vast majority of the users of the roads are not criminals. It's easily shown that around 80-90% of the content on the Pirate Bay is violating copyrights.
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So, based on what you've said, translations shouldn't be allowed before the film has been released? Okay, I may disagree with it (I think you've entirely ignored legitimate uses that precede a public release while glossing over the fact that public releases oftentimes happen during the theatrical release these days; Amazon Instant Streaming has a number of titles that are currently in theater, for instance), but I can at least see the logic behind it. What about the other 98.6% of films though?* What legiti
Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, but the actual point of it all is that you already have the film (so you've paid). One more example of copyright law getting it completely wrong.
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No, the actual point is that subtitles are derivative works - which require permission from the holders of the copyright to create. Which is an example of copyright getting it exactly right. You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,
Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri (Score:5, Insightful)
> You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,
No it isn't.
The whole point of copyright is that we do have something to muck with. Copyright exists to foster what you would describe as piracy. It is not a virtual land grab. That's just corporate propaganda.
No. The whole point of copyright is piracy.
The corporations have just distorted things.
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You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,
The whole point of copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". At least in America, creative control was never the legal basis for copyright, the basis was to benefit the public by encouraging new works.
The common view now has become much more attribution oriented. People expect their Youtube video to stay up as long as they clearly identify the original work and it's creator, and get angry if they do that and their derivative work gets taken down. The law is just lagging the changi
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No. We don't all know.
You are just being a huge asshole and just declaring everyone to be thieves with nothing to back that up except your own stupidity and total lack of morals.
You are simply projecting. YOU are the dishonest scum and you are projecting that on the rest of us.
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Totally wrong. If you have the disc how do you think you can mux in fan subs? The people using these are torrenters, not those that just bought a disc. Yes, there are ways to rip, transcode and remux, but be honest, we all know these subs are for pirated videos.
Fansubbing long predates torrents, or the Internet having the bandwidth (to the typical house) needed for video. Fansubbing was done for years with a Xeroxed typed sheet (or later emailed or posted text), and you were mostly on your own to match up the lines of translation to the spoken lines. I remember watching anime at cons while reading along on the translation I was handed.
That bein said, it was also extremely common to pass out copies of the video tape of the anime at those cons, but usually that wo
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I don't see how it's "entirely fan-made". Under current law, a translation of an audiovisual work's original script into another language is a derivative work.
Perhaps true, but actually preposterous. I can invent a contrived language that maps the dialog of one movie directly into the dialog of another movie (at least if there are only two speakers).
Only in US-style banana republics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet more proof that copyrights are NOT good (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet more proof that copyrights are NOT good for the public. They are only good for big media and other sociopathic entities with deep pockets.
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Because allowing creators and owners of things to profit frm them is EVIL and a BAD THING.
PROFIT IS EVIL!
Derivative work (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Derivative work (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's not only about language barriers but also about the disabled. If I were them I'd look up to see if there's any laws about making works accessible to the deaf. There's laws about government websites in the USA, surely there's a loophole somewhere about deaf people and movies.
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Too late -- the MPAA cripped it. (Score:2)
A week or two ago, a bunch of countries signed an treaty that allowed for publishing materials for the disabled [ip-watch.org].
So now various groups like HathiTrust (who won their lawsuit by The Authors Guild [michigandaily.com]) can now share their work with groups from other countries. Unfortunately, the treaty had been modified to exclude audio visual works [guardian.co.uk].
It might be that individual countries still have laws that apply (eg, the US does, but they still might not've been in full compliance), but we don't yet have an international treaty
Re:Derivative work (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, you do require the copyright holder's permission to create one...which is sad if the creator of the original work chooses not to authorize it in your language.
I can see both sides of this, but there should be a loophole for non-commercial works. There's no way the studio can show economic losses, and the derivative work is valueless in and of itself (without the original film).
there should be loophole for partials. the subtitles aren't really that useful on their own.
however all nordic countries have basically translator guilds which do sometimes hilarious work, but have been bitching lately how their unionizing hasn't gone all too well. problem is that spending couple of years in university apparently doesn't make good as good translators.. since they don't care shit about the material. fans do.
some of the best subs I've seen have been for japanese stuff, with the translator bothering to mention texts, clues and culturally significant symbols as well.
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Sadly, you do require the copyright holder's permission to create one...
No, not really, see, Swedish Copyright law 1 kap 4, you would even be the copyright holder of the translation. However, the exact same restrictions applies to your translation as to the original work. You are not allowed to make it publicly available (which the site did) but you can make it available for smaller groups and others can copy it and so on.
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Sadly, you do require the copyright holder's permission to create one...which is sad if the creator of the original work chooses not to authorize it in your language.
Yet its a victory for things like Open Source.
For instance, suppose I was to translate a popular LGPL'd JAVA project (LibreOffice, for instance) into C# or VB.NET. The LGPL restrictions would still apply to my derivative work, so I couldn't release my translation under a BSD license nor could I just release compiled binaries. I have to continue to respect the original license.
What we see here on slashdot, judging by the comments, is that its supposed to make a difference if the original license was mai
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Because the broken one costs more (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that part of their motivation to attack such a site is that people using these subtitles are likely to be using them with pirated versions of the shows/movies. You can select your own subtitle file on many media players for the show you downloaded, however, things you are watching on TV/Blu-ray/Betamax do not usually have the option to overlay custom subtitle files.
Mind you, this just lends more credence to the argument that legitimately purchased versions are often worse than pirated ones because they lack such functionality.
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Companies that have tried to market playback devices that allowed for such tie ins with user created content have been litigated off the market. If not for abusive content companies, these subtitle files likely would be perfectly usable with DVD players from the likes of Sony.
Of course with a general purpose machine (HTPC), you can pretty much do anything.
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The message left on the website after the raid (Score:5, Funny)
"We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked."
Well, d'uh (Score:2)
The end result of this will be to destroy copyright. I give it 10 years.
View from Thailand (Score:5, Informative)
As a native English speaker living in Thailand for a few years, I can offer a prospective from this side of the earth. Legalities aside, the native Thai movies have English subtitles during the first run in the theater. However, when the movies are released on DVD, they do not have the English subtitles. They used to have them, lets say 5 years ago, but because of piracy of (Thai) movies abroad (read: Malaysia), they no longer distribute DVDs with the English subtitles. On a 'blockbuster' release, the distribution rights for other outside of Thailand will be picked up by some company, which will usually include the English subtitles, as well as the native languages for whereever it being distributed. As a consumer here, that means if I wish to watch a normal Thai movie here, I better see it in the theater, because nobody will pick up the distribution, hence, there won't be a DVD release with English subtitles. As far as the raids go, I can see why the entertainment industry doesn't like fan subs, at least from this angle. What I don't necessarily see is why they have enough pull to make raids like this happen.
Sweden is an US colony by now (Score:2)
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From a country that used to be proud of its defense of human rights the path to the bottom was pretty fast.
There is a big difference between being proud of its defense of human rights and actually defending those rights.
For example, the USA had no plans to defend human rights of victims of Luis Posada Carriles [wikipedia.org], or of Branch Davidians, or of Vicky Weaver [wikipedia.org] who wasn't accused of anything to begin with, and of Sammy Weaver who was shot in the back and also killed. All that talk about "defense of human righ
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Along with UK veto'd the discussion of NSA spying without informing their population [wlcentral.org], wiretapped Russia [falkvinge.net], and we know what they did with Assange and Pirate Bay. From a country that used to be proud of its defense of human rights the path to the bottom was pretty fast.
hmm where did you get that? the swedish freedom is the freedom to do nothing. there's even worse cases in past 12 years than what you provided though.
their biggest human rights faults have always been being too trusting of the americans wanting to do the right thing, or germans, or whoever. heck, they sell offensive weaponry too, as if USA wasn't using it in offensive ways.
I'm not sure (Score:2)
"It underscores the general sentiment of the copyright monopoly not protecting the creator of artwork, but protecting the big distribution monopolies, no matter who actually created the art."
I'm not sure that outside of small bubble of people who don't believe in copyright at all (let alone understand the concept that others have rights in the first place), that such sentiment is general.
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I think you will find that most people realize that they have rights and object to the idea that individual liberties should be subservient to the rights of corporations.
Of course most non-enthusiasts won't realize what interesting things are being kept from them due to corporate lobbying.
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s/don't believe in copyright at all/pay attention to these issues already.
FTFY.
If you want to tell me the two bubbles are essentially identical, I would not necessarily disagree.
As the latter bubble expands, so does the former, generally speaking.
Let me see if I understand... (Score:2)
Sometimes the companies act differently (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, I've had experience with commercial film companies and fansubs.
A few years back, I had too much time on my hands, and an itch to watch certain foreign movies that (then) had no publicly available English translation. Not to be outdone just because I was monolingual, I downloaded the films themselves from the internet, downloaded subtitles for *other* languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) and proceeeded to convert the subtitles into English, using a mixture of google translate, perl, online dictionaries, hand-editing and mass rewatching of parts of the film, until I got something that looked roughly right to me, at the time. It took a pile of time, but as I say, I had too much time on my hands.
When I was done I finally got to watch the film, then uploaded the files to some subtitle database on the internet in case others found it helpful, which apparently a few people did. No matter that what I did had a lot of wrong bits (the hardest part is catching local idioms, which aren't well-documented, even on a place as comprehensive as the internet).
Fast forward a few years, and I spot DVD versions of one of these films on Amazon complete with English subtitles and buy it instantly. Finally, I'll get to see the film with properly translated subtitles, rather than some botch job by someone who didn't know what they were doing. And, of course, it turned out that the Korean company that packaged the DVD had just downloaded my subtitles from the internet, made some small alterations and slapped them on the DVD itself (sadly, not correcting the most obvious mistakes I'd made).
Seems some of these film companies will happily take free fan labour (however shoddy!) and sell it on to paying customers without acknowledgement or royalty*, while others will send in jackbooted thugs to have you sent to jail. Such is life.
*I'm not miffed about my work being used like this - I'm just embarrassed at the terrible job I did and hope the customers aren't upset by it!
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Because ... (Score:3)
It's something the producers can sell. In the case of alternate language subtitles, they can extract funds from distribution channels and segment the market. Can't do that if everyone buys the region 1 version and adds their own.
Re:Misleading article (Score:5, Informative)
not quite, government minion of big corporation made police do it. your government is under control of big corporations.
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and no direct bribery, insider information for stocks/markets or blackmail at all, no sir.......bwahahahaha
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no it is mainstream news. read or watch real mainstream news sometime. 95% of congressmen are corporate bitches, for example. sorry for the sad news.
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I mostly agree with you, aside from the fact there are plenty of laws out there that do not harm or inconvenience those in power, yet are still illegal anyway.
The major danger is to inconvenience those in power- but you're not safe doing harmless stuff either.
Those laws exist to divide and control the populace so they do not turn on their betters.
"This Left-Right paradigm concept theorizes that the two opposing political parties utilize their tremendous hold over mainstream media to dramatize political distractions and engage in covert warfare and operations, in grand performances of bureaucratic rivalry meant to propagandize and divide the populace. Divisive issues are purposefully fed through the major media outlets to divert attention away from the ruling cla
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Except that your "criminals" are doing a free public service out of love for the media, and you victims are wealthy beyond anyone's belief, and own the 'police' that they use to raid the 'criminals'...
It hasn't happened yet, but even US law makers (notoriously stupid), have begun to recognize that penalties against those doing financial profit crimes (various forms of piracy, especially those related to 'intellectual property', (where the property is really, all in your head -- aka imaginary property), are